I WAS staying with old Turkish friends in their
house on the Aegean sea when we learned about the
lethal blast in a Quetta courtroom. My hostess
was very concerned as she has been to Pakistan
many times, and has visited the Balochistan
capital as well.

But hardened as we Pakistanis have become to such
daily horrors, I must confess that apart from
making some perfunctory remarks, I was unable to
muster much shock and horror. The truth is that
over the years, terrorism has taken a heavy toll
not just on human lives, but on our ability to
share the suffering of the survivors.

The mind can only react to a certain amount of
violence; after a limit has been reached, it
becomes numb to yet more news of death and
disaster. Everybody from Musharraf downwards goes
through the motions, and we are promised that the
perpetrators of the latest carnage will be caught
and punished. But within a couple of days, it is
business as usual until the next atrocity.

After two decades of ethnic and sectarian terror,
we now face the prospect of endless political
terrorism in which officials and state
institutions are targeted for conventional and
suicide bombing. Needless to say, thousands of
innocent lives are being lost in this campaign.
And given the issues involved, as well as the
uncompromising nature of the foe, it is hard to
see any light at the end of this particular
tunnel.

What drives a person to strap a bomb to his waist
and kill himself, as well as strangers who have
not harmed him in any way? Where foreign
occupation is concerned, and there are few
weapons available to confront the enemy, it is
understandable when the oppressed take up this
extreme means of resistance. But even here, it is
not justifiable to target innocent civilians.

While discussing Islamic extremism in the West,
Musharraf and other Muslim leaders have rightly
emphasised the need to resolve issues like
Palestine, Kashmir and Chechnya to deprive the
terrorists of their appeal. But this does not
explain the growing phenomenon of
Muslim-on-Muslim killings. How does the bomb
blast in Quetta or the daily car bombs in Baghdad
solve anything? And why is the Islamic world
silent in the face of this violence?

A couple of years ago, a Karachi monthly magazine
ran a cover story on the terrorism in Kashmir.
One fighter was asked what he would do if a
political resolution was found for the disputed
valley. Revealingly, he replied that he would not
lay down his gun, but turn it on the Pakistani
leadership, with the aim of installing an Islamic
government there.

This is the crux of the entire problem. The
violence we are experiencing today is entirely
local, entirely home-grown. The young killers
hitting targets across the country are neither
fighting for a homeland, and nor are they seeking
to evict a foreign occupier. They want nothing
less than to seize power, and to turn Pakistan
into their version of the ideal Islamic state. In
their incoherent, ill-formed vision, this would
include restoring the caliphate, as well as doing
away with all western influence and elements of
modernity, except, perhaps, the Kalashnikov and
the Internet.

How, you may ask, has it come to this? The answer
does not lie far from anybody living in Pakistan.
Today, well over 20,000 madressahs are imparting
religious instruction (and precious little else)
to millions of children across Pakistan. And
while most of them do not actively encourage
violent revolution, they do effectively brainwash
their students into rejecting reason and
independent thinking.

Despite repeated promises from Musharraf, these
seminaries continue to teach their narrow
syllabus. Religious parties have ignored the
government's attempts to monitor the source of
their financing, as well as the subjects they
teach. A certain number of madressahs are
indoctrinating young minds in the way of jihad,
as well as filling them with hatred for
everything western. Even worse, each sect runs
seminaries that teach students that only their
version of the faith will lead them to salvation,
and that other Muslims are not true believers.

If readers think I am overstating my case, they
only have to look to Lal Masjid in Islamabad, the
scene of the stand-off between the government and
a group of young female madressah students.
Despite the provocation offered by these girls
who occupied a children's library while armed
with batons the government beat a hasty retreat.
More chilling than the actions of these students
was their words: they openly stated that they saw
their role as being mothers and wives of suicide
bombers.

Clearly, the madressah teaching these girls
should be shut down, and the staff tried for
brainwashing their wards. I shudder to think of
the kind of people who send their children to
such places. But surely, the government has a
role in ensuring that young Pakistanis are not
taught noxious matter that harms them and the
state.

Instead of regulating and monitoring schools
established in the country, the government gives
more and more space to these hate-mongers.
Incidents like the Quetta suicide bombing are the
inevitable outcome of the state's inability to
act. This is especially so when self-styled
politicians like Ijazul Haq, the dead dictator's
son, hobnob with the mullahs in charge of Lal
Masjid openly, and plead their cause. Their cause
being, of course, the illegal occupation of state
land.

But perhaps the contradictions that paralyse
Musharraf are hard-wired into Pakistan's very
existence. As religious parties point out, not
entirely inaccurately, if Pakistan was to be a
secular state, why was India partitioned?
Clearly, they insist, Mr Jinnah had desired an
Islamic state, and therefore it follows that the
law of the land should be the Shariat, and the
constitution ought to be the Quran.

You can quote from any speech of Jinnah's you
like, but the fact of the matter is that over
time, the religious right has moved its agenda
forward, while rationalists have been
marginalised. Leaders like Musharraf want it both
ways: to wield power with the support of the
mullahs, while showing a modern face to the rest
of the world.

However, as he might discover soon, straddling
the fence is uncomfortable work. Meanwhile, the
mayhem will go on, as the graduates of madressahs
take their shortcut to the houri-filled paradise
of their fevered imagination.

_____

[2]

Gulf News
19 February 2007

Editorial

QUETTA BLAST SENDS CHILLING MESSAGE

The suicide bomb blast that killed a district
judge and 14 others in Pakistan's south-western
province of Balochistan matches the pattern of
six other suicide bomb attacks that have rocked
the country's cities in recent weeks. It must be
strongly condemned, not least, because the
bombers cause grievous harm to innocent
non-combatants.

As investigators begin to piece together the
evidence by reconstructing the face of the
suicide bomber which, as in the Islamabad hotel
blast, has curiously been found intact, they will
find yet again that the trail leads back to the
pro-Taliban-Al Qaida parties that have taken root
in the states bordering Afghanistan.

Indeed, Quetta, the capital of Balochistan,
rocked by a troubling insurgency and the killing
by Pakistan's army of one of its leaders in his
hideout, is ringed by Afghan refugee camps, which
the international community believes is the
command and control centre of the resurgent
Taliban. While Pakistan has stoutly denied the
accusations, the repeated attacks on its body
politic point to the widening arc of the
Taliban's pernicious reach and the militia's
ability to mount hit and run attacks with
apparent ease on both sides of the border.

Clearly, the peace pact with North and South
Waziristan is fraying and madrassa reform is of
little use. The time to negotiate with terrorists
is over, especially when they are imbued with the
arcane values of ultra-conservative closed
societies, as demonstrated by the tragic killing
of a government official offering to inoculate,
not emasculate, children against polio.

Pakistan is paying the price for allowing
xenophobic tribal chiefs to march to a different
drummer. These men operate beyond the purview of
the law, their agenda at odds with the norms of
international society. The international
community can only applaud Islamabad if it
abandons its softly-softly tone for an all too
necessary sledgehammer approach.

______

[3]

Daily Star
March 02, 2007

THE RIPPLE EFFECT
by Zafar Sobhan

Ever since Dr. Muhammad Yunus's announcement
earlier this month that he would be launching his
own political party with a view to contesting in
all 300 constituencies in the next general
election, the entire country (or at least the
chattering classes) seems to have become
embroiled in the question of whether this is a
good idea or not and whether this move by Dr.
Yunus will be beneficial to the country or not.

I have to confess that I find the question as to
whether Dr. Yunus's entry into politics will be
good for Bangladesh or not to be a little
puzzling. Honestly speaking, I simply don't get
it. Why would it be bad for Bangladesh for one of
our most eminent citizens to aspire to serve the
nation in a political capacity?

There appears to be some notion that as a Nobel
laureate, Dr. Yunus should remain above
controversy and above the fray. The best response
to this line of argument comes from a pithy and
sardonic blog-post by Naeem Mohaiemen: "So we
should wrap our 'only' Nobel laureate in tin foil
and put him in the glass cabinet in drawing room,
so that mehmans can see it and go 'aha aha'?"

The whole point, surely, is that for years the
nation has collectively bemoaned the fact that
good people do not get into politics and that
politics is filled with crooks and gangsters. At
the same time, when Dr. Yunus (or anyone else)
made one of his infrequent critiques of the
political system, the snide rejoinder was always:
"Well then, why don't you enter politics, if you
think you can do better?"

Well, now Dr. Yunus has entered politics and the
knives are still out for him. I guess the first
lesson of politics is that you can never please
some people.

I think that the more good people we have in
politics and the more political parties committed
to the common good, the better. In Dr. Yunus, I
see a man who has worked for the common good for
thirty years, who has engendered a social and
economic revolution in terms of how the potential
of the rural poor (specially women) is viewed
both by themselves and by others, who has not
enriched himself in the process, and who is of
unimpeachable personal integrity and
accomplishment.

How we could be worse off due to his entry into
politics, I really don't see. If Md. Zafar Iqbal
or Prof. Jamal Nazrul Islam or Abdullah Abu
Sayeed or Fazle Hasan Abed decided to enter
politics I believe that we would be similarly
blessed. Why not? These are individuals with
demonstrated commitment to the public good and
integrity. How could we be worse off if they
decided to try their hand in government?

So far it is unclear exactly what will be the
platform of Dr. Yunus's new party, but I presume
it will be something a considerable portion of
the country will be able to get behind. And if
they feel that they want to vote for such a
platform, all well and good. Others might not.
They may have a difference of opinion on the
issues or believe that one of the other political
parties will be able to deliver better
governance. That's all well and good, too.

That is what democracy is all about. Choices. One
of the problems we have faced in the past was
that too often we were not given much of a
choice. Take a look at the major party
nominations for the abrogated January 22
elections. In constituency after constituency,
the voters were denied a true alternative, and
would have had to choose between candidates who
were corrupt if not criminal.

Right now we are in a unique period in Bangladesh
history. The Fourth Republic (1991-2006) has come
to a close, and as a nation we need to put lots
of thought into how to formulate the Fifth
Republic, which will, hopefully, last for a lot
more than fifteen years.

We need to go back to the drawing board and start
over. We need to think very carefully about what
reforms need to be put in place to make the
political process more honest and responsive and
to make sure that in the Fifth Republic our
democracy is more functional than it was in the
fourth.

Frankly, I would even favour a constitutional
convention to put everything on the table to see
what would work (as I wrote in a column as far
back as July 29, 2005). One thing which is clear
is that the Fourth Republic of caretaker
government and parliament boycott and hartal and
non-accountability and court-packing and
partisanisation of institutions and impunity for
official wrong-doing was neither sustainable nor
will it be missed.

But, of course, reforms by themselves are never
enough. Reforms only work to the extent that
there is honesty within the political culture.
The caretaker government is a good example of how
even the best intentioned and ingenious of
reforms can be subverted and compromised if the
political will is not there.

What is needed in this country is reform of our
political culture. Come on. When elected
representatives import luxury cars duty-free only
to sell them and pocket the profits, something is
seriously wrong. When political parties feel free
to ignore their own political manifestos and
election pledges once in power, something is
seriously wrong. When people trying to form a new
political party have to fear for their lives,
something is seriously wrong.

This is not to say that the political system and
indeed the existing parties are not capable of
reform. There are many, many people of good
conscience and integrity in all the political
parties in Bangladesh. In many instances, it is
these grassroots workers who have been let down
and marginalised by their leaders, but the core
of honesty and integrity is there.

One thing that Dr. Yunus's entry into politics
will do will be to empower these people within
their own party. We are, in fact, already seeing
this in the aftermath of the recent
anti-corruption drive, with the politicians left
standing understanding that the time has come for
them to clean up their act and no longer tolerate
criminals within their ranks.

The existing political parties command the
respect and loyalty of tens of millions of
Bangladeshis, and, more than anything else, they
need to be responsive to the public. They need to
listen to their voters and their party workers
and understand that their mission is to represent
the people.

This has not happened much in the immediate past,
but now the political parties realise that they
have no choice. They were on their way towards
irrelevance, but now they have the opportunity
and the compulsion to reform themselves.

Win or lose, succeed or fail, I believe that Dr.
Yunus's entry in politics has helped set in
motion what I hope will be an irreversible push
towards openness, honesty, and responsiveness in
the body politic, a push towards creating a
democracy that is truly functional and
representative, and that the nation can only be
the richer because of it.

Zafar Sobhan is Assistant Editor, The Daily Star.

______

[4] [Five years after one of the bloodiest
pogroms in India, a wide variety of apolitical
developmentalist NGO's in Europe and North
America that are involved with India just sit and
twiddle their thumbs and remain oblivious to mass
violence by the hindu right. Its a shame they
havent woken up to vigourously supporting secular
activism! -- SACW ]

o o o

The Guardian
March 1, 2007

A BLIND EYE TO BIGOTRY

Five years on, those behind the Gujarat
anti-Muslim pogrom are still running the state

by Mike Marqusee

Five years ago this week, across the Indian state
of Gujarat, the stormtroopers of the Hindu right,
decked in saffron sashes and armed with swords,
tridents, sledgehammers and liquid gas cylinders,
launched a pogrom against the local Muslim
population. They looted and torched Muslim-owned
businesses, assaulted and murdered Muslims, and
gang-raped and mutilated Muslim women. By the
time the violence spluttered to a halt, about
2,500 Muslims had been killed and about 200,000
driven from their homes.

The pogrom was distinguished not only by its
ferocity and sadism (foetuses were ripped from
the bellies of pregnant women, old men bludgeoned
to death) but also by its meticulous advance
planning. The leaders used mobile phones to
coordinate the movement of an army of thousands
through densely populated areas, targeting Muslim
properties with the aid of computerised lists and
electoral rolls provided by state agencies.

Much of the violence unfolded with the full
collaboration of the police. In some cases,
police fired at Muslims seeking to flee the mobs.
When asked to help a group of girls being raped
on the roof of a building, police officers
demurred, explaining: "They have been given 24
hours to kill you." Subsequent investigations
confirmed that police knew in advance of the
pogrom and had been instructed not to interfere
with it.

Indian and global human rights organisations have
singled out Gujarat's chief minister, Narendra
Modi, of the Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), as the
principal culprit. As a result of his alleged
complicity in mass murder, he was denied a visa
to the US and cannot visit Britain for fear of
arrest.

Yet Modi remains chief minister and has become
not only the BJP's most popular figurehead, but
also a poster boy for big business, foreign and
domestic. Gujarat, which contains 5% of India's
population, now boasts 18% of its investment and
21% of its exports. At this year's Vibrant
Gujarat conclave, the showpiece of the BJP
regime, the great names of Indian capitalism -
Ambani, Birla, Tata - sang Modi's praises, echoed
by delegations from Singapore, Europe and the US.
Anxieties about dealing with a politician accused
of genocide have been allayed by the appeal of
Gujarat's corporation-friendly environment, not
least its labour laws, which give employers
hire-and-fire rights unique in India.

Five years on, Muslims in Gujarat still live in
fear. About 50,000 remain in refugee camps. Most
of the cases filed by victims of the violence
have never been investigated. Witnesses have been
intimidated. No more than a dozen low-level
culprits have been convicted. None of the major
conspirators has been brought before the courts.

The events of 2002 did not conform to the
paradigm of the war on terror, in which India was
a prize ally, so never achieved the infamy in the
west they deserved. An array of interests - in
New Delhi, London and Washington - is dedicated
to ensuring the atrocity is consigned to
oblivion. For them, the release of Parzania, a
feature film centred on the violence, is an
uncomfortable development. Despite dramatic
flaws, it accurately depicts the savagery of the
anti-Muslim violence, its planned, coordinated
character, and the complicity of the police and
the state government. Cinemas in Gujarat, under
pressure from the Hindu right, are refusing to
screen the film.

If and when Parzania reaches audiences here and
in the US, it will offer a necessary counter-tale
to the fashionable fable of the Indian neoliberal
miracle, exposing the brutality and bigotry that
have gone hand in hand with zooming growth rates
and hi-tech triumphalism.

· Mike Marqusee writes a column for the Hindu;
his most recent book is Wicked Messenger: Bob
Dylan and the 1960s.

_____

[5]

Mumbai Newsline
March 01, 2007

WOMEN'S GROUPS PROTEST ON THE BEACH, SAY 'NO MORE GUJARATS'
'The action is intended to send out a message
that communal riots and massacres affect women
very deeply, physically and emotionally'

by Georgina Maddox

Mumbai, February 28: Women's groups gathered on
Chowpatty Beach on Wednesday afternoon to stage a
silent protest against violence. Dressed in
black, the colour of mourning, they lay down on
the sand to spell out the words, "No More
Gujarats".

"The action is intended to send out a message
that communal riots and massacres, whether it was
the Sabarmati Express or the post-Godhra riots,
affect women very deeply, physically and
emotionally as well as in the context of
livelihood," said Nadita Gandhi and Nandita Shah
of Akshara and Forum Against Oppression of Women
(FAOW) in their joint statement.

Other women's groups like Awaaz-E-Niswaan, LABIA,
Women's Centre, Sahet Janwadi Mahila Sanghtan,
Stri Mukti Sanghtan and Special Cell for Women
and Children also issued a joint statement
against what they called "state sponsored
violence".

The statement said: "Five years after the carnage
in Gujarat in 2002, it bears repeating that this
was a massacre unprecedented in Independent
India, openly led by the State against its own
citizens. It left over 2,000 dead and lakhs
displaced, terrorised and scarred. At a
conservative estimate, over 300 women were
sexually brutalised-raped and killed in full
public view."

The women who had gathered at the beach also
point out that the Gujarat government returned Rs
19.1 crore to the government saying that there
were no more refugee camps, while over thousands
of Muslims still living in makeshift camps around
the state are unable to return to their homes.

They hope this action of theirs in Mumbai will
bring some attention to the issue and not allow
people to forget about the homeless victims in
Gujarat.

______

[6]

HindustanTimes
February 28, 2007

FORGET HER NOT

by Aakshi Magazine

Go to Room No 8A of the Ram Manohar Lohia
Hospital in Delhi. You will find three policemen
guarding the room. They will not let you take
your bag or phone in. You will be greeted by a
man who will be genuinely happy to see that you
have come to show your support to his sister. His
sister is Irom Sharmila Chanu.

Sharmila has been on a fast for more than six
years now protesting against the Armed Forces
Special Powers Act (AFSPA) in Manipur. She began
when she was 28. She is 34 now. The AFSPA gives
the armed forces unchallenged powers to arrest,
search, shoot and kill on suspicion alone.

It has been grossly misused in Manipur for 49
years. Women have been raped in front of their
families by army officials. Many people have
simply disappeared only to be found later with
bullets in their bodies. The uncertainty and
trauma of living in such an atmosphere is
something that we can't quite understand. In any
case, how can we understand when we are never
even told about it.

Last week, about 20 students from our college
visited Sharmila in the hospital. We sat there in
shock as we were told about the situation in
Manipur. We came back disturbed and shaken by the
inhuman silence of the government and the media.
Sharmila began her fast in Manipur but came to
Delhi in 2006

in the hope of being heard. She was arrested and
admitted to hospital. She spends her day reading
or practising yoga while being force-fed through
a tube attached to her nose. It has been six
years and yet she has not lost hope.

Predictably, the State is indifferent. More
shockingly, so is the media. One might agree or
disagree with her politics but to do that, one
needs to hear her out first. The media,
meanwhile, continues to celebrate 'Gandhigiri'
and middle-class 'activism'.

Aakshi Magazine is a second year History Honours
student, Lady Sri Ram College, New Delhi.

______

[7]

"Right to Live" dharna: parents of babies born
malformed due to Carbide's poisons demand the
children should receive free medical care

At a press conference in Bhopal today, parents of
14 children born with congenital abnormalities
attributable to exposure to Union Carbide's
poisons demanded free medical care for their
children and monthly pension of at least Rs. 1000
per month from the state government. 10 of these
children had been successfully treated by the
Chingari Trust set up by Rashida Bee and Champa
Devi Shukla, leaders of survivors organisations
sitting on dharna for the last five days
demanding medical care, economic and social
rehabilitation and protection from Union
Carbide's poisons from the state government.

Chromosomal aberrations have been found among the
people exposed to Union Carbide's toxic gases
giving rise to apprehensions of birth defects
among children of gas exposed parents. Several
scientific studies by government and
non-government agencies have confirmed the
presence of several birth defect causing
pesticides, chemicals and heavy metals in the
ground water in and around the abandoned Union
Carbide factory.

Studies by the MP Pollution Control Board have
shown that pesticides such as endrin, dieldrin,
carbaryl, methoxychlor and others that can cause
birth defects are present in the ground water
samples collected from the area. International
environmental organization Greenpeace reported
finding tetra-, penta- and hexa- chlorobenzene as
well as lead and mercury in soil and ground water
samples, all of which can cause birth defects.

The Chingari Trust was set up with a fund of Rs
56 lakhs that Rashida Bee and Champa Devi
received with the Goldman Environment Prize
awarded to them in 2004 for leading the campaign
of the survivors of the Union Carbide disaster.
Last year the Trust identified 100 children with
different kinds of birth defects in the gas and
contaminated ground water exposed affected
communities. 65 of these children were seen by
medical specialists from New Delhi and Bhopal at
a health camp in December 2006.

The specialists found that an unusually large
number of children suffered from cerebral palsy
that causes total disability. The doctors also
found children with cleft lip and missing palate
and with disabilities related to vision, hearing
and mental functions. According to them a large
number of these children could significantly
benefit from surgical treatment and counseling.

Rashida Bee and Champa Devi have so far organized
treatment for 10 children with limb deformities,
cleft lips and missing palates in New Delhi and
Bhopal. Last month they apprised the Minister of
Bhopal Gas Tragedy Relief and Rehabilitation
about the findings of the health camp and have
urged the state government to arrange for medical
treatment of children born with malformations due
to Union Carbide's poisons.

The four organisations that are determined to
continue with their dharna till the state
government concedes to the demands of their
"Right to Life" campaign have called for medical
treatment of children with congenital
malformations and monthly pensions to their
families. They are also demanding monthly
pensions for women who were widowed by the
disaster, persons who are too sick to earn a
livelihood, survivor families living below the
poverty line and those above 60 years with no
family to depend on.

Please visit www.bhopal.net for more information
on the campaign for justice in Bhopal

______

[8]

Daily Times
March 01, 2007

HITTING SECULARISM FOR A SIX
by J Sri Raman

The more serious and somewhat unexpected factor
this time, by all accounts, has been a sudden and
sharp spurt in prices, especially of vegetables,
on the election eve. This is a factor that has
led to the fall of governments and governing
parties in the past. Onion prices, in particular,
have brought tears to the eyes of ruling parties
and politicians

Will Virendra Sehwag return to form? Will Irfan
Pathan regain his rhythm? Team India has left for
the World Cup cricket tournament in the West
Indies, and India is in the midst of intense
speculation about not just the eleven but the
performance of individual players as well.

A retired cricketer, however, has just proved
himself in a political game. Former Test opener
Navjot Singh Sidhu even campaigned in the just
concluded State Assembly election in Punjab as a
cricketer. He was magnificent, clouting an
imaginary ball with an invisible bat and clearing
the top over the mid-off in a televised
street-corner rally. And he won in the Amritsar
constituency by a handsome margin.

The whole country once used to celebrate Sidhu's
towering, trademark sixers. His election victory,
however, was no cause for national elation. He
did not bring joy to everyone by winning a seat
for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), an ally of
the regionalist Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) that
has recaptured power in Punjab. But few would see
his score in this very different ball game as a
blow for what India's far right describes as
'cultural nationalism'.

That catchphrase, of course, is a camouflage for
majority communalism, which is not what has won
in the home-state of India's Sikh minority. Nor
was 'Hindutva', as the far right calls its
ideology, responsible for the simultaneous BJP
victory in the hill-State of Uttarakhand. The
party managers of the campaigns in the two
States, Arun Jaitley and Ravi Shankar Prasad,
admit that it owes the twin trophies to two
factors of a far more mundane kind.

They and media pundits alike attribute the poll
outcomes, primarily, to the 'anti-incumbency
factor'. In both the states, the people have
voted out the party in power, the Congress in
these cases. The assumption - true for a long
while in all cases except left-ruled West Bengal
and extreme-right-ruled Gujarat - is that any
party is liable to get tainted after a term in
office. Some other time, we will come to the
question of what the exceptions prove, besides
the rule.

The more serious and somewhat unexpected factor
this time, by all accounts, has been a sudden and
sharp spurt in prices, especially of vegetables,
on the election eve. This is a factor that has
led to the fall of governments and governing
parties in the past. Onion prices, in particular,
have brought tears to the eyes of ruling parties
and politicians. This must have mattered far more
in Punjab, for example, than the laughter to
which the famous Sidhuisms may have moved his
listeners.

This is a price, say Congress apologists, which
must be paid for an inevitably inflationary
growth of the economy. We will keep the question
of whether there can be growth without tears, or
with onions, for some other time again. The point
made by all this is that the BJP is a beneficiary
of popular discontent on issues that have nothing
to do with its anti-people ideology.

Having discovered this silver lining to the dark
cloud, those who consider themselves secular may
hasten to close further discussion. They must
not. The more important point to be made is that
this makes no case for complacency. The vote may
be against 'incumbency' and price increases, but
it can still be a victory for the camp of
'cultural nationalism'.

This is not the first time the far-right has won
an election on people-friendly issues here or
elsewhere. Nowhere has the fact prevented it from
exercising democracy-given power in a far-right
direction. The Atal Bihari Vajpayee government,
after all, had no popular mandate for enacting
Pokharan II or presiding over the Gujarat pogrom
of 2002.

These election results also come as a repeated
caution against complacency of another kind. It
deserves note that the BJP has done repeatedly
well in elections in the period when it has been
racked more by internal feuds and factionalism
than ever in the past. The BJP and its parent,
the Jan Sangh, were known for discipline when
power remained its distant dream. It is perceived
proximity to power that has promoted politicking
inside the party.

Forces opposed to the far-right cannot win the
good fight by merely gloating over its factional
strife. They can do so only by exposing the
divisive and destructive agenda that 'cultural
nationalism', combined with pretended concern
over the people's problems, conceals. The BJP can
be fought better by forging an alliance of
parties that cannot back communalism at least for
the sake of their constituencies.

The far-right, above all, needs to be engaged
frontally. Sidhus of the political playground are
good players of the googly!

The writer is a journalist based in Chennai,
India. A peace activist, he is also the author of
a sheaf of poems titled 'At Gunpoint'

______

[9]

Outlook Magazine | March 05, 2007

The Ink Is Soiled
WE CAN'T DO WITHOUT THE UNIQUE ANGLE OF VISION
THAT GEOGRAPHY LENDS TO LITERATURE
by Nayantara Sahgal

Many years ago I was in college in America, at a
time when most Americans were surprisingly
ignorant about the rest of the world. I remember
listening to a quiz programme on the radio-there
was no TV then-where questions were being put to
an audience, and the first person to raise his
hand and give the right reply got a money prize.
At the end came the big $64,000 question: "Is
there any other Athens besides Athens, Ohio?"
After a pin-drop silence, one person raised his
hand and said, "Athens, Greece." He got huge
applause as well as the big prize.

I think of that when I hear it said
nowadays, with great authority, that there is no
Indian writing of worth except diasporic writing.
It sounds to me like knowing there is an Athens
in Ohio, and having to be told there is also an
Athens in Greece. In more ways than one we are
living in strange times.
When I was thinking about what to say to you on
this occasion, I thought of a wonderful sentence
of Nirmal Verma's in an interview he gave about
ten years ago. He said that India had two great
epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, but that
its third great epic was the culture we call
Indian. To this I would add that if any product
deserves to be labelled Brand India, it is this
composite, many-faceted culture which has no
parallel anywhere. If it is alive after 5,000
years, we know it is because it has remained open
and assimilative. Yet we take this third epic so
much for granted, we forget it is something of a
continuing miracle, when in Europe in recent
years great multicultural entities have
disintegrated into fragments, and here, too, we
are facing the heat of a deliberate onslaught
directed at destroying our diversity and
shrinking us into a monoculture. Personally, I
would not know how to squeeze myself into the
uniformity of a monoculture. I am a Hindu by
accident of birth, but half-Muslim by culture,
not to mention all the Christian, Buddhist, and
atheist influences that are an integral part of
my Indianness. We have so far rejected the call
for a monoculture and chosen to cherish all the
strands that have gone into the making of our
modern identity. I like to think that it is an
aspect of our third epic which the Sahitya
Akademi celebrates every year through the
literatures of our many languages.

Indian writing has spread far and wide. It now
comes out of several continents, and the
experience of migration has added an exciting new
dimension to literature. Art has crossed borders.
But nothing has yet eliminated borders. Borders
exist. I keep hearing that this is One World, but
of course that is one of the fables of our time.
It is a better connected world, but the
nation-state is very much with us. Nations drive
furious bargains with other nations to protect
their resources and preserve their identities.
There is fierce competition in the race for
armaments and there are separate national
stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.
Nations think nothing of attacking, invading and
occupying other nations. And, as always, the
powerful lay down the agenda that others have to
follow. So, as long as there are nations, there
are going to be national literatures, each rising
out of its own particular soil, and out of the
subsoil of its collective consciousness. Our own
collective consciousness has been hauntingly
expressed by Jawaharlal Nehru, who was a writer
himself, in these words: "For we are very old,
and trackless centuries whisper in our ears."

It is only common sense that where we are located
on the map is what gives us our particular camera
angle of vision, along with the insights and
conclusions that flow from it. It is a different
matter that we may be using themes and locations
other than our own, or that what is written on
Indian, or Turkish, or Hungarian soil may have a
meaning and a resonance far beyond its borders.

It should. That is the mark of great literature.
But it is much too soon to dispense with the
stamp of geography on literature which makes for
its unique angle of vision, and for the bond
between soil and story-no matter that the current
fashionable theory may tell us that
cross-cultural connections are more relevant
today than roots. Relevant to whom, we might ask,
since most of the world's people still stay put.
I have always found it useful to cultivate a
little deafness toward judgements and verdicts
laid down for us elsewhere, and to come to my own
conclusions from where I sit. And I believe what
is relevant is not to be subsumed into the kind
of globalisation where some of the world's people
are privileged to keep their distinct identities
while others are required to surrender theirs.

We see the diverse effects of soil on story even
within our own borders where we have no single
lump called Indian literature. It varies from
region to region not in language alone, but
because imagination draws as much on a region's
history, memory and psychology as on personal
experience. In the same way, diasporic writing
occupies different regions and spaces of its own.
One expatriate writer has unshackled the English
language and turned it to exhilarating and
acrobatic uses. Another has made the whole of
Asia his literary canvas. All writing is
adventure. But the daily business of living in
India makes for its own kind of writing. Those
who live here are joined by the gut to the nitty
gritty of this particular social and political
environment, which is only another name for the
conditions we live under: caste, corruption and
religious fundamentalism alongside computers and
satellites and a sexual revolution. To whom can
all these possibly matter but to the lives that
are affected by them, the people who enjoy or
suffer their consequence and those who feel the
need to join battle against them? The ultimate
battles for a new world are fought on one's own
soil, and part of every battle is putting it into
words. Stories are not about social and political
conditions, but whatever you are writing
about-whether it be the mouth-melting flavours of
your grandmother's cooking, or the sound of rain
on your roof, or your love for your beloved-it
would be a very different story if it were
happening somewhere else, under another sky, in
the entirely different living conditions of some
other society.

Considering the dangers and challenges we face
within our own borders, and the changes we need
to bring about in our society, we are fortunate
that we have politically conscious novelists and
poets among us, for politics, like everything
else, is the material of fiction and poetry, as
it is the material of all art. We would not have
been stirred by some of the tragedies and traumas
of the twentieth century but for the plays of
Bertolt Brecht, Arthur Miller and Samuel Beckett,
and the art of Picasso, not to mention many other
works of European, American and Latin American
fiction. The artist is a political animal, more
so when the line between public events and
private life disappears and vast numbers have to
face the terrible consequences of public events
in their private lives. Art cannot float in a
void. It relates to, and is acutely sensitive to
its environment.

There are, of course, states of mind and being
that affect the human condition everywhere. One
does not have to migrate to feel exiled or alien.
Take my experience of childhood in British India.
I was reduced to feeling like a foreigner in my
own home town because, in the heart of Allahabad,
there was no reminder of anything Indian. The
cinema showed English films. The confectioner was
English and sold English cakes. Every
establishment catered for an English clientele.
And there was an iron ceiling above which Indians
could not hope to rise in their professions
except with the approval of the British.The
punishment for rebellion against this scheme of
things was imprisonment, deportation or death,
and my father was one of the Indians who, in
these circumstances, went to his death.

But why go back as far as childhood in an
occupied country? To some extent I still feel
alien in a world whose political arrangements,
economic priorities and military solutions are
not of my choosing. A number of us on this planet
are in a condition of permanent alienness, having
to live on the terms laid down by those who make
the rules.

In reverse, a migrant can feel securely rooted to
the ground where he has settled. It is a need of
human nature to put down roots, and it is natural
to adapt to one's surroundings and be influenced
by them. This may be why a diplomat, who is a far
less sensitive creature than a writer, is
transferred to a new post every three years so
that he doesn't become too closely identified in
outlook with any one post. So there are no hard
and fast categories that define exile, or
alienness, or roots. And there is no such divide
in literature. In the end, fiction can only be
divided into two categories. It is either good or
bad. But what distinguishes writing here from
Indian writing elsewhere is simply that the
home-grown writing of any country comes out of a
home-grown sensibility. And that is a priceless
possession, not to be given up, at least so long
as there are nation-states and national
literatures.

(Nayantara Sahgal is a novelist and writer. This
essay reproduces the speech she gave at the
Sahitya Akademi Awards function on February 20,
2007.)

______

[10]

Ahmedabad Newsline / Indian Express
February 27, 2007

'NO CHANGE IN STATE'S ATTITUDE TO MINORITIES, RIOT-HIT'
Panel discussion, exhibition on Day One of
six-day event marking Gujarat riots; activists
lash out at State Govt
Express News Services

Ahmedabad, February 26: More than 25 civil
society organisations have joined hands to
organise a six-day-long series of programmes to
commemorate the Gujarat riots of 2002 _ Sach ki
Yadein Yadon ki Sach _ which got under way here
at Gujarat Vidyapith on Monday. The first
programme of the series was a panel discussion by
various social activists on "revisiting 150 years
of 1857, 100 years of Satyagrah and 5 years of
Gujarat Carnage."

Speaking on the occasion, noted social activist
Teesta Setalvad observed that there has been no
perceptible change in the State Government's
attitude towards minorities in the last five
years.

"There is a deliberate attempt to look at the
burning of train at Godhra and the subsequent
riots through different glasses," Teesta observed
adding, "While most of the riot accused are
roaming freely, as many as 87 people from Godhra
are incarcerated under POTA and are behind the
bars for last five years.

Coming down heavily on the State Government,
Teesta said that while Chief Minister Narendra
Modi refuses to comment on the ban of releasing
the movie Parzania, his indulgent silence on Babu
Bajrangi's imposition of the ban speaks volumes.
"Who is running the state? Narendra Modi or
Bajrangi and people like him?" she asked.

She also raised an alarm on political apathy
towards the entire issue. "Why are the protests
and remembrances so apolitical? Why is the
opposition silent on the issues of justice and
rehabilitation of riot victims?" she asked.

"There have been a lot of talks on the role of
Gandhian institutions during the riots and post
riots, but one may also look at the role of the
premier educational institutions in Ahmedabad and
Baroda," Teesta observed, adding that in spite of
being autonomous by nature, their silence only
indicates that 'fascism' has been deeply
entrenched in the Gujarat civil society.

A recent study by "Citizens for Justice and
Peace," reveals that till date as many as 8,700
riot-hit people are still living in camps without
BPL cards or ration cards, Teesta said adding
that going by that study, only about 15 families
got a compensation of Rs 40,000 while a majority
had to do with meager or no compensation. "There
has been no justice for women who were victims of
gender violence during the riots," she further
pointed out.

"The Nanavati Shah commission has enough evidence
to ask extremely uncomfortable questions to the
State Government," Setalvad said adding that as
the report of the commission is expected by the
end of this year along with Assembly Election,
the civil society needs to remain extremely
vigilant and prepared to take to streets if such
a need arises.

Speaking on the occasion, Sophia Khan, Director,
Safar said that while the state government has
been making tall claims regarding the state being
peaceful and investor friendly, the current peace
is an uneasy calm that is a result of silenced
justice. "A lot of people ask me why we are
observing this commemoration programme? Why are
we reopening the wounds," Sophia said adding that
the wounds of the riot victims are far from
healing. "It is only the civil society which is
trying with their limited means to heal the
wounds, while at the State's level, the process
hasn't even started so far," she added.

Others who spoke on the occasion included Mallika
Sarabhai from Darpana, Zakia Jawhar from Action
Aid, Ila Pathak from AWAG and so on.

Later, an exhibition of paintings in Mithila
tradition on the context of Gujarat carnage of
2002 by Santosh Kumar Das was inaugurated at
Amdavad ni Gufa as a part of the programme.

______

[11] UPCOMING EVENTS

(i)

dear friends,

This is a just to remind you of the Aman Yuva
Convocation scheduled for tomorrow i.e. March 02
at 2 pm at the Auditorium of Dept of Social Work,
D[elhi] U[niversity] (North Campus).

Its an event to acknowledge the efforts made by
the young people who have worked as Aman Yuva
volunteers in different places on the issues of
communal strife, poverty and urban homelessness,
and hunger at different points of time in the
last one year. We all get together to share their
experiences and observations and the
transformation that has taken place within their
perspective and alternative approach towards the
mentioned issues and concerned effected people.

In this talk, Akhil Gupta will present some of
the framing arguments from his study of two
Indian state bureaucracies. From fieldwork
conducted in the tehsil-level offices of these
bureaucracies, he will endeavor to construct a
theory of the state in India. Whereas some of the
literature has emphasized the strength of the
Indian state and its seeming centralization,
ethnographic approaches to the state discover
something that is far more tentative and
disorderly. The idea of "the state" is itself
constructed out of the many everyday practices of
bureaucracies, and this has profound consequences
for the legitimacy of politicians and bureaucrats.

Akhil Gupta is professor in the Department of
Anthropology at UCLA. He has previously taught at
Stanford University and at the University of
Washington. He is the author of several books,
including Red Tape: Corruption, Inscription and
Governmentality in Rural India (forthcoming, Duke
Univ. Press), Postcolonial Developments:
Agriculture in the Making of Modern India (Duke
Univ. Press, 1998), and, as editor, of The
Anthropology of the State (Blackwell, 2006);
Caste and Outcast (2002); Culture, Power, Place
(1997); and Anthropological Locations (1997).

Buzz for secularism, on the dangers of fundamentalism(s), on
matters of peace and democratisation in South
Asia. SACW is an independent & non-profit
citizens wire service run since 1998 by South
Asia Citizens Web: www.sacw.net/
SACW archive is available at: bridget.jatol.com/pipermail/sacw_insaf.net/

DISCLAIMER: Opinions expressed in materials carried in the posts do not
necessarily reflect the views of SACW compilers.

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